


step one

by reptilianraven



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: BMC Digizine 2017, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 17:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15667896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reptilianraven/pseuds/reptilianraven
Summary: Jeremy blinks up at the ceiling, wonders where it ends and where the walls begin, and realizes that he has no idea what he’s supposed to do now.





	step one

**Author's Note:**

> this was my fic piece for the [BMC Digizine](https://bmc-fanzine.tumblr.com/post/175070512573/purchase-the-digital-fanzine-here-after-a)!! the prompt was anything post-canon under 2k words. [a WONDERFUL companion art piece to this right here](http://panstarry.tumblr.com/post/176916938720/my-entry-for-the-bmc-fanzine-my-work-was). go check it out!!!

So Jeremy willingly ingested a supercomputer that ended up manipulating him, hurting the people around him, and nearly caused what totally could’ve been the backdrop to a YA dystopian novel. Thankfully, that last bit didn’t happen, but the first two are still terribly, horrifyingly true.

He comes to terms with this as he wakes up. Jeremy trickles back into reality, away from the vague haze of electric blue and carbonated red his mind cooked up for him while he was out. He opens his eyes and the first thing he sees is white.

Endless, sterile white. 

Jeremy’s been to the nurse enough times to recognize what’s totally the ceiling of a hospital, and he’s almost relieved. In the past, it’s always been a mark that no matter how bad things got, he still survived to see it. 

But then along with him pours in memories of everything else. A voice in his head, chills down his spine, words thrown like barbs, faces crumpling, fear, screaming. The ceiling is white and it looks like it’s stretching out endlessly, beckoning Jeremy forward. But he stands, stock-still, unmoving, his back straight, too scared of the lightning that could snake out at any moment—lightning under his skin, _shocking_ —

Jeremy sits up too fast and falls to the bed with a groan. “Ow.” His head thrums with pain, with consequences, but there’s nobody in his head. Nobody but him.

“Feels like you’re missing a part of yourself, doesn’t it?” A lisping, familiar voice asks from the side.

Jeremy doesn’t know who or what or why, but he does know that he agrees. There’s something of his that’s missing, or rather something long abandoned. It’s a part that was frail but still at least existed before, pushing him to survive each day because it was all he knew. It took a backseat when the Squip set up shop in his head and gave him orders to follow. Now, it rings in his ears, silent in the face of whatever it is stretching out in front of him.

The thing about everything that’s happened up to this point is that thanks to how goddamn weird and awful it all was, there’s absolutely no plan for what happens after. There’s no guide. No ten step process. No WikiHow article. Nothing.

Jeremy blinks up at the ceiling, wonders where it ends and where the walls begin, and realizes that he has no idea what he’s supposed to do now.

-

So Jeremy isn’t—well. He’s not not okay. For somebody who’s gotten through what he has, he’s functioning pretty well. He talks to Rich without flinching, talks to Michael without crumbling into apologies, talks to his dad and only lets himself stare at his pants for no more than ten seconds at a time. 

They let him go home after a day, then he goes to school where he pointedly doesn’t freak out upon seeing Jake, Jenna, Brooke, and Chloe. He gets through an entire conversation all the while banishing the afterimages of them with smiles too perfect and eyes too bright.

He even asks out Christine. There’s no cold, smooth voice talking him through it, but there’s no stuttering voice either. Christine tells him to say what’s on his mind, and he’s lucky something spills out. 

When she smiles, a little lopsided, a little goofy, nothing like the overly serene grin Jeremy remembers from the play, he can almost believe that everything will go back to normal.

Which both does and doesn’t happen.

It does in the sense that Jeremy wakes up everyday and the electric agony he’s so scared of never shoots itself back into his veins. When Jeremy talks to himself in his head, nobody but him replies. Sometimes, he feels like there’s something in the corner of his eyes, but it stays there. In the corner. Jeremy’s gaze is otherwise clear to see the expanse of his life, to see it wonder just when exactly he’ll start moving.

It doesn’t in the sense that Jeremy doesn’t slouch anymore. His fingers itch for his jean pockets, but he still resists the urge. In chemistry, Rich wordlessly hands Jeremy the box of matches and turns his head elsewhere when Jeremy strikes the match and lights the Bunsen burner. When he sees Chloe in the halls, he smiles in greeting but finds himself looking away. She does too.

What happened to all of them was far from anything even resembling normal, and it shows in the cracks. It shows in their lives. It shows, and a part of Jeremy wishes he couldn’t see it. He could maybe fool himself that they were all fine, but they weren’t.

At least not yet.

-

So Jeremy tries. It’s the least he could do. 

His mind is still silent, almost as if it’s afraid. Afraid to make noise, to make a decision, to stand back up after years of being pushed down and months of being held down. So when Jeremy can’t find the words, he tries to get things across in other ways. He buys Brooke a latte, manages to remember her exact order, even now, to give to her in the morning. He feels a little more settled when she looks at him with warm eyes and the start of a smile. 

He replies to all of Dad’s texts—because his dad actually texts him now—and is sure to always be home on Saturdays. They’re doing this brunch thing. It’s kind of awkward, but Dad is wearing pants and sometimes they end up laughing so hard Jeremy can forget how he looked like right before Jeremy left for the play. 

He patches things up with Michael. He pushes past the stilted silences and the pauses where, before, things would’ve been as easy as breathing. Jeremy feels like he’s in a dark room he once knew like the back of his hand, but now he trails his hand along the wall, looking for the light switch, looking for how to make things right.

Jeremy starts small. Always greets him in the halls. Invites him over for video games. Introduces him to everybody else. It’s slow going and it isn’t easy but when Michael’ starts patting him on the shoulder again, when his laughs fill the air like music again, Jeremy knows it’s worth it.

He actually almost cries at lunch when Michael extends his hand, familiar and inviting. For the first time since the Squip, their hands connect once, twice, before finishing off with a little tap of their feet. When Jeremy looks up, Michael is smiling. 

“Do that again!” Christine slams her fruit cup down onto the table. To her right, a sleeping Brooke lifts her head with a sluggish _whuh?_

“Huh?” Michael freezes, a little bit like a meerkat that just heard an eagle screech. Which, of the random sounds Jeremy’s heard Christine make, isn’t really too far off. “Do what?”

Christine gestures as if she’s getting an airplane to land. “The thing you just did with Jeremy.”

“Oh,” Jeremy says. He holds his hand out and instinctively, Michael reacts by completing the rest of the movements.“You mean our handshake?”

“Our secret handshake, dude,” Michael turns to Christine. “Confidential information. This handshake bonds our souls together, or something.”

“You guys have been doing that since freshman year,” Jenna says, almost fond. “A bit too late for secret.”

“Why don’t we have a secret handshake?” Rich whips his head to Jake. 

Jake raises an eyebrow. “What do you call our shoulder hug thing, man?”

“Lazy, that’s what.”

“We need a secret handshake,” Christine says to Jeremy.

“Sure. Our secret handshake can be—” and Jeremy just says whatever comes up. Talking to Christine always works best like that. He raises his hand up, as if he’s going to go for a high five. “—holding hands.”

“Hell yeah.” Christine leans over the table, linking their fingers together. In the corner of his eye, Jeremy sees Rich swoon over Jake’s shoulder and Michael clutch his chest dramatically. 

“That is the cutest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen,” Chloe says.

“I try,” Christine grins, letting Jeremy go. She looks at her hand for a second. “I still kinda do want a secret handshake though.”

“Coming right up, Chris.” Michael lifts his fist, placing it front of her, a standard handshake starter. “Think fast.”

Christine, too excited and probably still in the realm of high fives, meets Michael’s fistbump with an open palm. 

There’s a second of silence. Then, wheezing, gleeful laughter. Jeremy sees Brooke snickering, her head still pillowed on her arm. It’s like a dam being broken, because everybody else follows. Michael thunks his head onto the table, shoulders shaking. Jenna tries to cover her mouth, but her laughs sneak past, unbidden. Christine brandishes her fruit cup like a weapon, telling everybody to _shut uuuup, come on_ , but her smile betrays her. Or maybe it doesn’t.

It’s times like these, Jeremy can believe things will work out. There will be bad days, but there’ll be days like this too.

-

So Jeremy’s leaning against the hood of Michael’s car, his slushie momentarily abandoned on its surface while he tries to remember how to fold those paper fortune tellers everybody used to fold as kids. Next to him, Michael gnaws on the straw of his own slushie, rambling about a documentary he saw last night on migratory birds.

It’s so normal, so before that Jeremy’s hands still halfway through a fold that totally isn’t getting anywhere. Sometimes the thoughts just bubble up from where he last left them. He unfolds the sheet of paper, white and endless. 

“Gah,” Jeremy hands the crumpled sheet of paper to Michael who looks at it with a wince. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Same. That’s why I gave it to you.” Michael hums, trying his hand at folding again. 

“No, I meant like—I mean _yeah_ , but also—” Jeremy shoves his hands into his pockets and ignores the instinct that he shouldn’t do that. The voice in his head, the nervous one that he’s come to recognize as his own, tries desperately to make words that make sense, but he comes up empty. “Nevermind, it’s—”

“Dude,” Michael interrupts him. He’s had years of practice at the whole game of getting what Jeremy’s saying even if Jeremy doesn’t get what he’s saying. His voice is soft when he asks, “You do know it’s okay to not like, _be_ okay, right?”

“I guess.”

“And it’s okay to not have stuff figured out either,” he says. In his hands, the paper starts to take shape. “In case you haven’t noticed, none of us really know what we’re doing. We’re flying blind, but not alone. Like the bird V formations.”

But not alone, Jeremy echoes in his head. “If all the birds are blind I don’t think that’s a very good formation.”

Michael elbows him in the side. “Missing the point. It’s not about the birds, it’s about the flying, get me?”

“Not really,” Jeremy laughs.

“Yeah, okay, fair. I lost the metaphor too, but hey,” Michael pokes him in the face with the fortune teller, now no longer a flat piece of crumpled paper. “I figured it out. Try it. Pick a thing.”

“There nothing written on it yet.”

“And isn’t that a fun fortune? Imagine the possibilities.” Michael opens and closes the fortune teller, pulls open a flap, and reveals blank, white paper. “Tadaa.”

Jeremy blinks down at the fortune teller, then to the tips of his scuffed shoes. Something stretches out in front of him, but he puts his foot forward.

“Where are you going?” Michael asks.

“Just gonna get a pen,” Jeremy says, thinking about first steps and journeys and making it up along as he goes. “I’ve got a couple of ideas.”

**Author's Note:**

> im [actualbird](http://actualbird.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


End file.
